Governments have created post offices for collecting, sorting and distributing the mail. The United States Postal Service (USPS) currently handles large volumes of mail, which is delivered to individual homes, government offices and many other entities. An individual home may have few occupants and a single mailbox in which the USPS places all of the mail for the occupants of the home. A large apartment house may have many apartments having one or more occupants in which the USPS places all of the mail for the occupants of an apartment in the same mailbox. Small business may have a single mailbox in which the USPS deposits all of the small business mail. The USPS may also deliver the mail to the lobby of medium sized establishments. Large establishments have many people who receive large volumes mail. Typically, the USPS delivers the mail addressed to occupants of large establishments to the establishment's mailroom, or personnel from large establishments go to the USPS to retrieve the establishment's mail.
Mailrooms of large establishments currently handle large volumes of mail, which is delivered to individual offices and/or local distribution points. Large establishments often assign individual internal addresses, which are often kept in computer databases, to the occupants of their buildings to make it easier for their mailroom personnel to deliver internal mail. Mailroom personnel may deliver mail directly to individual offices and/or to mail stops that serve a plurality of offices and/or desks.
As occupants move from one office or desk to another, their internal address changes, and the mailroom should redirect the occupant's mail to the occupant's new address. To have the mail redirected, someone would need to change the occupant's internal address in the database. Often, the internal address change does not occur, so mail continues to be delivered to the occupant's old office address or the occupant's old local distribution point. A great amount of time may transpire before the mailroom realizes that the occupant's internal address has changed. Thus, a disadvantage of the prior art is that mailroom personnel must search for the moved occupant's new address, often by phoning the occupant and asking where to deliver the occupant's mail.